Borrowing pronouns

[maher, johnpeter]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

calquing in pronouns:

Modern Greek uses the apparently French system, with old singular and plural
further specialized to indicate not number alone, but relative status: /esi/
/esis/ [ECY ECEIC].

--Byzantinist lettering in Greece today often uses the lunate sigma, which was
adopted in Cyrillic.

In the Balkans, it is anecdotal that if, instead of old singular <ti>, a
[polite] stranger employs the polite <Vi> (old plural) to a solitary farmer,
the latter will turn around to see who else is there.

In Poland <Pan Pani> 'sir, Mister, Lord; lady, madame' are used as '[your]
majesty, worship, highness' etc. Only members of the communist Party deviated
from this, using the Russian model of <ty Vy>. --In days of yore, the Tsar was
addressed with <Ty>, not <Vy>. --Cf. French, where Catholics pray to God with
<tu>, Protestants with <Vous>, an exception being the Angelic Salutation (Ave
Maria), which Catholics recite as "Je Vous salue, Marie...".

In German, which as is well known opposes <du> and <Sie>, old second singular
and third plural, augments the etiquette in a restaurant setting: the waiter or
waitress addresses a group at table with <... die Herrschaften> 'the
lordships'.

So, it seems pronouns are as exportable as etiquette, because of the social
climbing gene.

In Carinthian (Austria) the German dialect (there is also Slovene) has polite
<Tes>, or <Des>. Initial consonants are neutralized re voicing. (See
Issatschenko in Trubeckoi on that.)

j p maher

Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> I seem to remember that Gaidhlig [Scots Gaelic] calqued French  <vous>
> by using <sibh> "you all" [sp?] for formal 2nd person singular

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